


Scars

by Colubrina



Series: Rare Pair Harry Potter One Shots [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Don’t copy to another site, F/M, soul mates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2020-09-07 18:04:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20313745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Colubrina/pseuds/Colubrina
Summary: Theodore Nott never expected to be happy, especially not after he was sure he felt his soul-mate die.





	Scars

Theodore Nott did not expect much out of life. What few hopes he might have had for a happily ever after were gone by the time his father helped a cauldron bring forth a monster. Life was horror. Death had taken his mother, and darkness ate his father, and Theo waited for whatever siren call would pull him past the point of no return too.  
  
His very soul-mark seemed to taunt him with the reminder that his world was about endings. Strong emotions woke the bond between soul mates, and most people found theirs at a moment of heightened joy. First kisses were a common way to discover the person who balanced you, who reflected you, who drove you to better yourself.   
  
Nothing that sweet happened to him. He woke one night in fifth year, clutching his shoulder, barely able to hold back a scream of agony. The scar that bloomed along his skin suggested whoever was meant for him had just died, cursed into oblivion. That felt right. That felt in keeping with the rest of his life. Of course, his soulmate would bond to him at the moment of her death. Of course, he wouldn’t discover that person with anything as joyful as a chance meeting at an ice cream shop, or a dance at a wedding. No, he found his through pain.

He went on. It might sound very poetic and romantic to pine away at the loss of possibility. Pining, however, was an unwise choice in his world. Other students might have the luxury of going home over the summer holiday to enjoy a few precious months of peace. They could lie and tell themselves that the end wasn’t coming, that Voldemort wasn’t really going to burn their world to ash. Theo didn’t. Death Eaters came and went out of his family home, talking about how Muggle-borns had stolen magic and how their Dark Lord was going to make everything right again. They managed to turn their lives of wealth and privilege and their impressive family trees into the story of how they were victims. They pitied themselves and were eager to fight. He couldn’t see how they’d lose. 

Bit by bit, he gave up every shred of hope that things would work out. Voldemort’s power grew. His soulmate was lost to him in every way except for the echo on his shoulder of the curse that killed her. Bit by bit, he began to grow angry because he knew what sort of people threw dangerous curses at school girls. They were in his house. They were taking over his world. Bit by bit, he decided that, since he was sure to die unhappy and unloved, he might as well take down as many Death Eaters as he could before they slaughtered him. If they had killed his soulmate - and surely, they had – then they could all die. 

He befriended Neville Longbottom. He brewed potions to help the injured as Death Eaters began their reign of terror throughout Hogwarts. He set traps, and he rescued people, and he used his pureblood status to distract the monsters from the people too afraid to defend themselves. And, in the final battle, he became one of the scores of anonymous students, launching curses at the enemy.

When the fighting ended, and he stood, alive and mostly unscathed, he didn’t know what to do. His robe had been ripped off by the fingers of a dying girl he knelt over, potion held fruitlessly to her lips. His shirt had been singed by a curse that just missed him, leaving his untouched even as much of the fabric crumbled into dust, baring the curse scar on his shoulder that matched the one on a body lying somewhere in an unmarked grave. He had meant to join her in death. 

He didn’t know what to do now. He sat, drained, at the edge of the room. No family rushed up to him to see how he was. He had no close friends to come over. He was alone and alive. He watched happy reunions and tearful discoveries as people learned who had lived and who had died until he couldn’t stand it anymore, and he bent forward and rested his face in his hands.  
  
At some point, he would have to get up. He would have to get up, and he would have to do something, but he couldn’t begin to imagine what those that might be. Perhaps he could just sit here until night fell again, then sleep on this floor. He was so tired that he thought he might sleep forever. Sleep, sleep, sleep until the darkness finally gave up and took him.

The hand on his shoulder made him jerk up in surprise. Hermione Granger. Of course, she would be the one to find the lost souls and try to gather them in. He admired the wit of whoever had deputized her to that task. Unsympathetic. Brusque. Brilliant. She’d be able to check on people without descending into sentimentality. If someone maudlin or overwrought had come up to him, he might’ve said something unforgivable. As it was, he said, “I’m fine. I don’t need anything.”

She sat down next to him, and he really looked at her. Bags had collected under her eyes and her skin taken on a grayish cast. She looked too thin. She was exhausted and underfed and, just like him, she had no family to seek her out and check whether she was alive. He had never considered before how very lonely it must be as a Muggle-born brought into the wizarding world.  
  
“How about you?” he asked. “Do you need anything?”

“Just to sit,” she said. “If you don’t mind.”

He didn’t. Her presence was an unexpected balm to his soul. As they sat at the edge of a battlefield, she felt like life and, for the first time, it occurred to him that the war was over, that spring had come, and that things would go on. He turned to thank her for the company, and she was staring at the scar on his shoulder, transfixed.

“Soul mark,” he said. He tried to pull up the shredded remnants of his shirt to hide the scar. He had never shown it to anyone and didn’t want to explain that, whoever his soulmate was, she had died violently two years earlier.

“I know what they are,” she said softly. Of course, she did. Hogwarts resident swot knew everything she could read about. The shirt still wouldn’t cover the mass of twisting, disfiguring tissue. The harder he tried to pull it back in to place, the more it fell apart in his hands, and Theo couldn’t believe that the very first person to ever see his mark was Hermione Granger. “They told me I should have died,” she said. She was unbuttoning her own shirt and pushing it down. “No one could explain why I didn’t. There were all sorts of theories. Maybe because the Death Eater who cast it did it wordlessly, it wasn’t as powerful.”

“That’s not really how voiceless magic works,” Theo said. His heart was beginning to pound very quickly, and he couldn’t breathe. Hermione Granger had a mark on her own shoulder, a twisting, ropy mass of scars that exactly mirrored his. He lifted a finger to touch it in wonder. Then he met her eyes. She had started to cry, but her mouth had turned up into a smile. He took a thumb to brush away some of the tears, and the moisture mixed with the ashes her face, and it became a black streak. Theo began to laugh. He was making a mess of her.  
  
“You saved my life,” she said, her finger still on the scar. “I would have died.”  
  
He took that hand and kissed her palm. “I think you saved mine,” he said. He tugged her up. They needed to find food, to see what needed doing, to tend to the injured. Everything was going to be fine. 

**Author's Note:**

> This was written as a get well soon gift for my amazing and talented alpha reader, moonlightmasquerade. I originally posted in on Tumblr and FFN in November of 2018.


End file.
